Overall, this is some good information. I like the details that is given regarding the specs of the CPU's. While, some may not like the information I think it helps most of us understand the power of the current systems. Also I have always expected this generation to be about the physics rather than the graphic power within games. I think this step is needed in order for the gaming industry/console industry to move forward.

TBH, our preoccupation with MS is going to be nothing compared to the moves Steam is making. If my hunch is correct, gaming itself is about to make a massive leap this gen. MS may very well be hinging their brand on general entertainment if Valve puts together a competitive gaming-centric set-top box.

We may even see the first crowd-sourced console design. So, where Sony put together and delivered on everything we've been asking for all generation long, Steam may be swinging for the fences right out of the gate. This could make for a golden age. All speculation, of course, but my body has been ready for a Genesis vs SNES era for far too long.

I'm extremely skeptical of the Steam Box and let me explain why:

1. Size. Unless they go with custom silicon, like an APU (PS4/Xbone) which leaves them with AMD tech, the box is going to struggle with performance\heat\power draw. This cannot be a tower so the compromises will be inbound, especially for discreet parts.

1a. Assuming Valve doesn't engineer\get somebody to engineer by throwing tons of money at them custom silicon to help ensure a relatively high efficiency for all the parts inside this box (again, like most consoles) this will also impact performance vis a vis competition.

2. Cost. Going with #2, there is no reasonable expectation here for this thing to be powerful if it is trying to hit a 'living room friendly' price range. 400-600.

3. In spite of having a "console\living room focus" (from rumors, the controller on the valve announce page and their stated emphasis on living room) it won't be treated like a console. It will just be a small PC. Unless they're going to write their own API's, hand out devkits, and make sure its fixed hardware (not modular) it won't have the 'performance benefits' that consoles do.

4. This is the real $#@! of it. PC gamers are, frankly, elitists and purists. They despise anyone even making the tepid suggestion of having full controller support like real consoles do (i.e. not half assed. They MUST implement aim assist for multiplayer titles). I also highly doubt Valve is going to forbid the use of kb\mouse for their SteamBox. So what's going to happen here?

Sony and MS fight reasonably hard to segregate m/kb users from gamepad users with a few exceptions like UT3.

And PC gamers (as illustrated perfectly with Crysis 2) will $#@! like a bunch of 3 year olds if a developer implements real and proper gamepad support.

So what will happen here? Will there be 'special' versions of a game that will play on certain servers if on a Steambox? Will they just allow options on servers for pad users and mouse users (so you can filter)? How will the PC community, who have stood behind STEAM, react to this?

Will Valve try to enforce game makers and publishers to implement game pad support for all games? They're going to have to try if they want to really maximize this unit and the mass appeal. Most gamers (by the numbers), like me, prefer gamepads.

I will not even consider looking at a Steambox unless they fix point #4. If this is going to be a 'living room box' then it damn well better feature a controller and the games had better sport REAL and FULL gamepad support offline or online.

1. Size. Unless they go with custom silicon, like an APU (PS4/Xbone) which leaves them with AMD tech, the box is going to struggle with performance\heat\power draw. This cannot be a tower so the compromises will be inbound, especially for discreet parts.

1a. Assuming Valve doesn't engineer\get somebody to engineer by throwing tons of money at them custom silicon to help ensure a relatively high efficiency for all the parts inside this box (again, like most consoles) this will also impact performance vis a vis competition.

2. Cost. Going with #2, there is no reasonable expectation here for this thing to be powerful if it is trying to hit a 'living room friendly' price range. 400-600.

3. In spite of having a "console\living room focus" (from rumors, the controller on the valve announce page and their stated emphasis on living room) it won't be treated like a console. It will just be a small PC. Unless they're going to write their own API's, hand out devkits, and make sure its fixed hardware (not modular) it won't have the 'performance benefits' that consoles do.

4. This is the real $#@! of it. PC gamers are, frankly, elitists and purists. They despise anyone even making the tepid suggestion of having full controller support like real consoles do (i.e. not half assed. They MUST implement aim assist for multiplayer titles). I also highly doubt Valve is going to forbid the use of kb\mouse for their SteamBox. So what's going to happen here?

Sony and MS fight reasonably hard to segregate m/kb users from gamepad users with a few exceptions like UT3.

And PC gamers (as illustrated perfectly with Crysis 2) will $#@! like a bunch of 3 year olds if a developer implements real and proper gamepad support.

So what will happen here? Will there be 'special' versions of a game that will play on certain servers if on a Steambox? Will they just allow options on servers for pad users and mouse users (so you can filter)? How will the PC community, who have stood behind STEAM, react to this?

Will Valve try to enforce game makers and publishers to implement game pad support for all games? They're going to have to try if they want to really maximize this unit and the mass appeal. Most gamers (by the numbers), like me, prefer gamepads.

I will not even consider looking at a Steambox unless they fix point #4. If this is going to be a 'living room box' then it damn well better feature a controller and the games had better sport REAL and FULL gamepad support offline or online.

My thoughts on the 'steambox' in a nutshell.

I don't think the steambox will go over as good as some people think.

I thought the purpose for steambox was to bring PC gaming to the living-room but using linux instead of Windows. The purpose of steambox was to make gaming on linux that much more so developers didn't have to rely on windows OS for gaming. It's basically a "stick it" to microsoft. I believe they stated a while back that the steambox wasn't going to be a traditional console with a controller.

Anyways, I'll be able to build my own "steambox" and make it much better.

Yeah the new OS work that Steam could bring to the gaming environment could interesting. From what I have learnt is that it is still potentially reliant on having a pretty decent PC to stream games from. It also depends on what hardware they push either by them selves or from working with partners.

I thought the purpose for steambox was to bring PC gaming to the living-room but using linux instead of Windows. The purpose of steambox was to make gaming on linux that much more so developers didn't have to rely on windows OS for gaming. It's basically a "stick it" to microsoft. I believe they stated a while back that the steambox wasn't going to be a traditional console with a controller.

Anyways, I'll be able to build my own "steambox" and make it much better.

I cannot fathom how a company would think that 'gaming in the living room' is synonymous with 'keyboard and mouse'.

Besides, part of their push for big picture mode was controller support.

I cannot fathom how a company would think that 'gaming in the living room' is synonymous with 'keyboard and mouse'.

Gamepad please.

I've tried it and it's not that great to be honest. I would rather have a desktop and to sit at my desk when gaming on the PC. I'm just saying that I could build a better steambox if I wanted to and I'm sure it would be much cheaper. This retail $#@! ends up costing a few hundred dollars more for PC's compared to me putting one together. Also, the normal household that went out to buy a PC at bestbuy won't know what the heck linux is anyway. I just don't see this selling to the casual like consoles and normal PC's do.

You know what the steambox reminds me of when I hear about it? webTV, I ain't kidding. LOL

With all due respect, we know they aren't desktop CPU's but unless I missed something there is no such thing as a 8 core CPU in a tablet either, or laptop if I'm not mistaken, hell most high end desktops are only quad cores, yeah it's no Core i7 in power, but just because it's based on the quad-core jag doesn't mean it performs the same and the extra cores do make a big difference you should know that and what its paired with, plus the idea behind using those chips are to have high performance with low power usage, I don't know why people keep comparing it to the laptop CPU, actually I do but why do it as if its the same thing when its not?
As for the 8 Core Jag vs Cell
That's not really a fair comparison, the Cell can outperform most highend CPU's at high compute tasks, it's general purpose code where the every CPU ups the Cell.

PS: if any word are randomly missing in my post it's because I'm tired.

The strain is really going to be on the GPU this time around. People are putting to much emphasis on the CPU when they shouldn't be.

That was true last gen as well, perhaps even moreso at the start.

Everyone was all enamored with Cell and it's massive FLOP performance. They thought it would make the PS3 unbeatable while I sat back and tried to point out that no current PC games were CPU limited on far weaker processors.

Sure enough almost 8 years later and I still can't think of a single game that was so CPU intensive that it required Cell, or anything close to it. If anything we've found that a superpowerful CPU is only good to replace sound and GPU functions if you lacked a proper sound chipset and had a weak GPU.

Everyone was all enamored with Cell and it's massive FLOP performance. They thought it would make the PS3 unbeatable while I sat back and tried to point out that no current PC games were CPU limited on far weaker processors.

Sure enough almost 8 years later and I still can't think of a single game that was so CPU intensive that it required Cell, or anything close to it. If anything we've found that a superpowerful CPU is only good to replace sound and GPU functions if you lacked a proper sound chipset and had a weak GPU.

See to me that would lead to the question what if both were just as powerful. IDK, but to me having both chips just as powerful would lead to better overall results. But that could also be dependent on the developer. There are some devs that like to utilize more CPU power overall than GPU power and some that are the opposite.

Everyone was all enamored with Cell and it's massive FLOP performance. They thought it would make the PS3 unbeatable while I sat back and tried to point out that no current PC games were CPU limited on far weaker processors.

Sure enough almost 8 years later and I still can't think of a single game that was so CPU intensive that it required Cell, or anything close to it. If anything we've found that a superpowerful CPU is only good to replace sound and GPU functions if you lacked a proper sound chipset and had a weak GPU.

for PC's it was true but the cell was basically doing much more than the gpu was suppose to. Lets stick a weak GPU in a system and have the cell to what's left over. While the cell could obviously handle it, it makes everything much more complicated than it should be and not only that it just isn't worth the money to invest in it when there are much better ways of handling graphics. In this case AMD has the right idea.

all the OP's linked article is stating is that the Cell processor is more capable than PC CPU's and that's true, it's more capable meaning that is handles a lot more but that doesn't mean it's better or more efficient.

I just don't understand all the doom and gloom on the specs side from some folk before we've actually even seen the games. Bottom line, this generation, even the Xbox One, is a big leap over the last generation. Games are going to look fantastic and there will be a very noticeable difference between this gen and last gen. If you have to have the very latest or highest specs on the graphic end, you need to get a PC- case closed. Otherwise, enjoy the consoles for the advantages they bring.

Granted, all of those applications have only 2-4 cores as mentioned.. And I'm sure that with proper tweaks and efficient use of multicore tech it will go a long way. Part of my issue is, before we couldn't really compare console CPU's to what we're used too (sans Xbox 1) as they were never X86.

Now, though, we can and it does not create favorable comparisons.

Are they as weak as I'm fearing in practice? Can't say, I'm not a dev. But on the surface they don't appear robust.

Granted, all of those applications have only 2-4 cores as mentioned.. And I'm sure that with proper tweaks and efficient use of multicore tech it will go a long way. Part of my issue is, before we couldn't really compare console CPU's to what we're used too (sans Xbox 1) as they were never X86.

Now, though, we can and it does not create favorable comparisons.

Are they as weak as I'm fearing in practice? Can't say, I'm not a dev. But on the surface they don't appear robust.

I don't see any 8-core CPUs. Only 4-core 1.0GHz CPUs at best for tablets. The PS4 and Xbox One CPUs are simply based on the Jaguar architecture. They are not tablet CPUs. If a tablet had that PS4 processor in it, it would fry in seconds.

for PC's it was true but the cell was basically doing much more than the gpu was suppose to. Lets stick a weak GPU in a system and have the cell to what's left over. While the cell could obviously handle it, it makes everything much more complicated than it should be and not only that it just isn't worth the money to invest in it when there are much better ways of handling graphics. In this case AMD has the right idea.

all the OP's linked article is stating is that the Cell processor is more capable than PC CPU's and that's true, it's more capable meaning that is handles a lot more but that doesn't mean it's better or more efficient.

Ahhh, but if you go back before the PS3 was released and you took a good look at what Sony was saying and doing during PS3 development you would realize that there was never supposed to be a separate GPU in the PS3 in the first place. Sony went so far as to say that adding a 3rd party GPU made no sense because they could make a more powerful chip for less money than anyone else.

That's why Cell has all the hardware to perform graphics rendering all by itself. Originally that's what it was supposed to do.

But that again just highlights my original point. Cell was so powerful that it was not only capable of performing all game related CPU functions but it could do the graphics and sound as well. Using the PC model of separation between functions the CPU has been overpowered for at least a full generation already. Using theoretically weaker CPUs this generation isn't a step back, it's just tailoring the system closer to what is actually needed rather than spending a ton of money on overpowered parts.

I don't see any 8-core CPUs. Only 4-core 1.0GHz CPUs at best for tablets. The PS4 and Xbox One CPUs are simply based on the Jaguar architecture. They are not tablet CPUs. If a tablet had that PS4 processor in it, it would fry in seconds.

You literally didn't read my post lol.

Granted, all of those applications have only 2-4 cores as mentioned.. And I'm sure that with proper tweaks and efficient use of multicore tech it will go a long way. Part of my issue is, before we couldn't really compare console CPU's to what we're used too (sans Xbox 1) as they were never X86.

I don't see any 8-core CPUs. Only 4-core 1.0GHz CPUs at best for tablets. The PS4 and Xbox One CPUs are simply based on the Jaguar architecture. They are not tablet CPUs. If a tablet had that PS4 processor in it, it would fry in seconds.

Really, is that your arguement?

So, if I design a full line of products specifically for tablets, and then you come along after the fact and ask me to put two of the chips together, you believe that the entire line of products is no longer designed for tablets?

Jaguar is a tablet APU. PERIOD. The PS4 and XBO versions are little more than 2 APUs put together, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still tablet APUs, it just means that there two of them.

Ah. But anways, Jaguar is just a low-power design architecture. Just because the low-power architecture was used to also create tablets doesn't mean the PS4 and Xbox One are tablet processors. 8 core at 1.6GHz is on level with large laptops. It's not desktop PC grade, but it's definitely just a hair under and definitely not comparable in performance to a tablet CPU.

This. There are tablet processors using jaguar micro architecture. Jaguar is simply a low power architecture, it's usage ranges from tablets to servers (see the wikipedia article linked - there are Opteron processors based on jaguar). Obviously a full blown AMD64 chip could yield higher performance, I believe these jaguar chips will offer an impressive power to performance ratio.

Ah. But anways, Jaguar is just a low-power design architecture. But I see where you are coming from. I can't seem to read today. lool

The CPU in the PS4 and Xbox One is Temash. That's a tablet CPU architecture. You need only look at the TDP to know it's a tablet chip and a laptop GPU. The 8 core PS4 has a lower TDP than a 4 core Jaguar laptop.

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